Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. A nephew of Senator Thomas Hart Benton, he was probably born in Williamson County, Tennessee. In early life he taught school, later setting in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where he became a prominent lawyer and politician. Benton represented Marshall County in the State Legislature in the Secession Convention of 1861, which led Mississippi out of the Union. Entering the Civil War as a Captain in the old 9th Mississippi, a twelve-month regiment, he was elected Colonel of the 37th Infantry (later recognized as the 34th) early in 1862. His service in 1862 and 1863 was largely in North Mississippi and Middle Tennessee. He participated in the Atlanta Campaign under Joseph E. Johnston in the spring of 1864, and was given command of General Edward Walthall's old brigade in July. On the twenty-second of that month, during a battle in Atlanta, he was struck over the heart by a piece of shell, and also sustained a wound in the foot that necessitated amputation. He died six days later in a hospital in Griffin, Georgia, before receiving his commission as a Brigadier General, to rank from July 26, 1864. Temporarily buried in Griffin, after the war he was reinterred in Holly Springs. The elaborate monument over his grave gives no indication of his connection with the Confederate cause. (bio by: Robert Patterson)